


In Sickness and Health

by meanderingsoul



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Bathing/Washing, Bruises, Caretaking, Crying, F/M, Hair Washing, Naked Cuddling, Past Torture, Psychological Trauma, Season/Series 05, Showers, Sleeping Together, Touching
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-10
Updated: 2018-02-10
Packaged: 2019-03-16 04:20:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,542
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13628472
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meanderingsoul/pseuds/meanderingsoul
Summary: Elena hadn’t realized, hadn’t realized just what he’d been doing, what he was thinking until right that moment.





	In Sickness and Health

 

Mack kept grumbling under his breath about the skeevy motel.

Elena had stayed in worse places, some even on purpose, but she wasn’t feeling like teasing him about being a total suburbanite right now.

Simmons had tugged Daisy into her room along with Fitz. The girl was only speaking to Coulson when absolutely necessary. She’d always had a fine temper that one. May and Coulson took the room in the middle, the better to listen for trouble probably. This place had no cameras and they hadn’t used their names, had come in smaller groups, but that didn’t mean trouble wouldn’t find them. Usually did.

Elena couldn’t look at the man, could barely look at May. If he was truly already sick, maybe dying (and Elena knew what she looked like when she lied and damnit that hadn’t been it) then it didn’t seem to show.

But she didn’t care about any of that right now. Those were problems for another time. Right now Elena hadn’t had Mack all to herself with some damn _privacy_ in what felt like a thousand years.

They closed the flimsy door and she wedged a chair under the handle with a blink of her powers and there was a moment where they just stared at each other, with just the light that hazed in from around the curtains to see by, limning the edges of his face like her fingertips through charcoal on the page. Both more and less than reality alone, art.

“We should get cleaned up,” he said but didn’t move, didn’t try to touch her or kiss her or peel himself out of his clothes or look around the room they found themselves in.

She nodded, turned away from him to take a look in the bathroom. At a casual looking speed even, better to give the man a moment to catch his breath. There was still blood dried around his eye.

There was a bit of mold in the tub around the edges, the towels were dusty and the labels peeling off the little bottles but gracias a Dios that was real soap and conditioner and even lotion, cheap and plastic-y smelling, but this was the best chance she’d had for hot water in weeks. The walls were thin here. Unsurprising. She heard a flare of faint, rapid chatter from Fitzsimmons and Daisy then nothing else. She knew those three would shout their way into some consensus before too long. They’d all mostly been sharing a bed in turns, been washing with a damn bucket of cold water collected from a dripping pipe and been glad of it.

Elena wished she could let it all feel like some bad dream now they were back, that future, but it hadn’t been and she couldn’t.

“Mack? Let’s…” He’d zoned out, was sat there on the bed with one boot off, staring at nothing with a terrible look on his face.

 _Oh Mack_.

She stepped up to him, stroked her hands over his shoulders. “Hey handsome.”

Slowly he lifted his face to look at her with a weak smile, one warm hand coming up around her hip. “Hey darlin.”

“You should come shower with me. There’s even _soap_.”

“Sounds good.”

He looked so sad. She took the hand on her hip in hers, tugged him up. Her hands on his hands. That other her had watched him die, had…

Elena’d be damned before she’d let that be their future.

She pulled him with her to the bathroom and tugged at his jacket until he started to undress. She turned her back to do the same and set the water hot, but not too hot to linger. Elena had no intention of getting out before it ran cold. She turned back around in time to help him pull his t-shirt over his head. His left side was stiff and dark with bruises. She hissed at the sight.

Kasius had beat him bloody. She regretted not taking the chance to spit on the blue bastards corpse, but Mack’s wide wet eyes and stricken face had been more important in the moment.

She groaned with feeling when the hot water hit her back. It almost got a grin out of Mack. He shifted closer to get in the spray with a quieter sound of pleasure. When she reached for the shampoo he caught her arm.

“Let me?”

They’d never really done this part, showering together, not as anything more than just a quick rinse off. Mack’s fingers sifted through her hair, kneaded into the base of her skull, soap bubbles trailing down her throat. It was _heavenly_.

They were both a mess. Dry skin and scrapes, raw circles where the metrics had been, her legs were stubbly as hell. His beard needed trimming and there’d been a few faint prickles of hair when she’d smoothed her hands over his scalp.

Elena tipped her sudsy head back against his chest, felt him brush a kiss to her forehead and hummed, smiling with her eyes closed. Their heights were too different for her to really rub back against not so little Mack, stupidly tall man, but there’d not been even a twitch against her back. He probably ached all over too much. Small wonder. Sex wasn’t what was important right now anyway, touching him was.

She poured some soap into her hands before she passed him the bottle, rubbed her palms up his arms, the ground-in dirt at his elbows and smudges of blood on his biceps, squeezed gently along the muscles. He held still under her hands, watched her with those dark, pretty eyes of his, but it wasn’t long before he pressed his lips against her damp forehead and turned her back to him. His thumbs kneaded in against her back so _nice_ she let herself moan just a little, but he didn’t just get her back for her. His hands worked down her arms, underneath and between every finger, over her breasts just the same, her hips and the curve of her ass.

What a tender thing to do for someone. _God_ she loved this man.

She was still surprised when he crouched down, kissing both her wrists while he shuffled to get a knee under him, one of his hands curving to hold her ankle. This was so sweet, but the tub was tiny and he was hurt. He shouldn’t be hunched over like that. “Mmm, Mack, you don’t have to do that. Come back up here. Let me…”

“Just. Please,” he interrupted her, and his voice was rough.

“Sure. Ok. I’m not _complaining_ ,” she said with a smile, tracing the curve of his ear with a fingertip, but his hands had gone still against the fronts of her thighs and he wasn’t even looking at her now.

Elena hadn’t realized, hadn’t realized just what he’d been doing, what he was _thinking_ until he stayed down on one knee in front of her, both her hands now clutched in his and his forehead to her belly just before his shoulders started to shake.

He’d been washing her with patient, dutiful care. Thorough. Gentle. The way he would if she suddenly _couldn’t_. If she…

“Mack,” she whispered.

“I couldn’t figure out… It hadn’t even been an _hour_ and he’d hurt you so bad baby. And then he… He just…”

She’d kind of hoped to never hear him cry again as long as she lived, to never hear his voice in that kind of pain again. Hearing it in the Framework had been so much worse than being shot.

“Listen to me. Mack, listen! That’s not going to happen. That futures not going to happen, ok? We’ll, we'll make better choices. We won’t take stupid risks. I’m not going to _lose_ you like she did.” She couldn’t feel the difference between his tears on her skin and the hot water, just held his head against the still soapy skin of her belly and swayed them while he shook.

Mack finally looked up at her with reddened eyes. “If it’s down to you letting me die or getting hurt like that, you better let me die darlin. I can’t live with that being my fault.”

Oh God in heaven this man. “The stupidest things come out of your mouth when you’re this tired turtle-man. Let me get the blood off your face.”

He sniffed after a moment, tipped his head back and let her carefully work the traces of blood away from around his eye with soapy fingertips, held still while she traced his lashes and nose and lips before he got back on his feet with a groan.

She let him work conditioner into her hair with the same tenderness, one arm curved back to hold him around the waist before she turned them to get him more into the spray of water, started rubbing soap into his back in firm circles before it went cold. He let his forehead rest against the tile, eyes closed.

Elena didn’t say anything. She’d been told the answer to all this from her own mouth.

Coulson dies in whatever way he’s already dying or you watch the man under your hands get incinerated. You live as some half-butchered lab specimen in a little box alone for decades. When you’re not dead. Melinda raises that inhuman girl who’s more crazy than not on her own because no one else is left to do it. Daisy supposedly breaks the planet and dies with it. What kind of a bullshit future….

But if it came down to it, what would she do? Shoot him? Tell everyone they needed to let him suffer?

Coulson was a good man, someone who’d been nothing but kind to her, even if he could be a harsh man in bad times. It was that harshness that let her know he’d forgive her if it came down to that. He’d trade his own life for the world’s in a heartbeat, would trade it just the same for whatever was supposedly going to happen to Daisy. He wouldn’t hold a grudge. But she might as well attack May and Daisy herself at that point. They’d never get over that. No one else would forgive her either. How could they?

She knew deep down she could probably do such a thing, with the stakes this high. It wasn’t like with Ramon. This was the _world_. But, living with it would be another thing entirely.  

The shower was starting to turn cool. She might have lingered anyway, but Mack turned the water off. She squeezed out her hair while he reached the towels down with his ridiculous arms. It was still a tangled mess, but at least it was smooth in her hands. He wrapped a towel around her shoulders so gently, rubbed her arms dry. It felt normal to pat his chest dry with a corner of her towel, careful around the bruises, to kiss his collarbone on tiptoes because she couldn’t reach his mouth and he was watching her with that look on his face again, the one that ached to see.

He glanced away when she wrapped the towel around just her hips, watching her step out onto the cold floor out of the corner of his eye. 

“Hey, bring me your clothes, we’ll rinse them off. I can’t stand putting any of that mess back on just yet.”

His grimace said he agreed, and she hardly minded the sight of him in just a little towel. She was untangling her ragged shirts when he came back with an armful of fabric.

“Hand it over.”

He frowned. “I…”

“No offence Mack, but there isn’t room for both of us and you look like hell. Go lay down. This won’t take me that long.” She had to wash things at a normal speed or the water wouldn’t be moving, but wringing everything out would only take seconds.

It was kind of sad how much she’d used her powers to do stuff like clean when she’d first learned to control them. She couldn’t do much cooking with them because none of the ingredients would actually cook. She couldn’t draw because the graphite or charcoal wouldn’t have the right friction on the page. But she’d wrung out and put away _so much_ laundry at completely unnecessary high speed. More time to sit in the sunset with a beer that way. She’d never owned up to it, not even to Francisco.

Of course Mack didn’t do like she said. She listened as he poked around under the sink and in the little cabinet, heard him check the pitiful latch on the door and look outside through the curtains, put an ear to the wall of May and Coulson’s room for any out of place sounds. Honestly, Elena kind of hoped they’d get over themselves and fuck. They weren't loud people, so it couldn't be that annoying, and it could only do them good. They should just sort out everything else later.

It didn’t take long to give everything a good shake and a squeeze under the water. One heartbeat run and everything was wrung out and draped around the room to dry.

Mack was sitting on the bed again, but he’d pulled the covers down, was watching her with that same sad smile. “Come ‘ere.”

He’d found a comb somewhere, missing a few plastic teeth and left behind. Wordlessly she sat on his lap, knees to either side of his with her back to him while he carefully worked his fingers through the worst snarls and started combing. It wasn’t sexy, being naked with him like this, gorgeous man that he was, it just _was_. It was just them, together and natural and quiet in a way she wouldn’t have been able to imagine ever having just two years ago.

She ended up with a fistful of loose strands while he worked. Normally she wouldn’t give it a second thought, but tonight she wanted to burn the hair or at least put it down the toilet. Her genetics, her blood, her flesh. How many children had been grown in plastic containers in some lab, made out of little parts that blue bastard had stolen from her? How many had been walked up to that platform, gone through terrigenesis like it was some circus show…

Her heart ached when Mack braided her hair back with practiced fingers.

He set his face against her back when he was done and she turned just enough to kiss his head. “Lay down. I won’t be a minute.” She did flush the hair, found her worn hairband in the pocket of her jeans and tied off her braid so it would keep.

She didn’t look in the mirror.

With all the bruises nothing was comfortable except laying on his right side. They lay face to face in silence for a while before she turned onto her back, shifted until his head rested under her chin, his heavy breathing across her breast, one arm around his shoulders. His hand cradled hers over her stomach under the covers, holding tight.

She watched him sleep a long while.

It felt like her own reddened, ghostly eyes watched her hold him from the corner.

 

**Author's Note:**

> (I don't know how people can just sit down and just... write sad stuff. I kept having to stop because I was having too many Feelings...)
> 
> Mack and Elena broke my fucking heart in 5x10. I literally got up and got more wine. Both of them have a lot on their minds here, struggling with some dark thoughts. Also, I don't think I can write fic for them without wedding-vow titles. I'll put my bets on them being engaged before the end of season 5. They are wonderful. 
> 
> Also, just in case, I am meanderings0ul over on tumblr. That is me. Meanderingsoul was taken already of course. <3


End file.
